Over the past few decades, the ability to measure, separate, and discriminate microscopic particles has improved. Tools are now available to probe individual cells. These tools are often complicated, expensive, and require sophisticated measurements techniques. For example, testing a water sample for certain waterborne particles (e.g., bacteria) can require equipment with significant sophistication. Furthermore, where presence of particles is to be detected and nature of particles measured based on a statistical approach (i.e., hundreds and thousands of samples are to be tested), such an approach adds further sophistication to testing equipment.
Single-biomolecule detection has been proposed using a variety of techniques such as mass spectroscopy, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, patch clamp, single-molecule fluorescence microscopy with enhanced imaging using photomultiplier tubes or avalanche photodiodes, atomic force microscopy, and nano-manipulator and nano-resonator technologies [50-51]. In many of these techniques, the observation of one molecule requires its prior isolation. Other considerations including sample preparation, sensitivity, and specificity in each of these techniques limit their applications to specific categories of biomolecules.
In various applications where it is desired to obtain information about nucleotides (T, A, C, or G) of a DNA or RNA strand, such information is not readily available with modern detection arrangements.
Therefore, there is an unmet need for a tester arrangement capable of detecting and measuring particles of various sizes that can be scaled up to provide statistical results based on detecting large numbers of samples.
The attached drawings are for purposes of illustration and are not necessarily to scale.